JPS62157089A - Generation of vector character - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Summary] In an information processing system, when performing document processing such as inserting characters into figures or creating, editing, or printing documents, it is necessary to create or reduce a single character, that is, a font,
Font processing such as enlargement is an important technology for office automation and smooth interaction between humans and computer systems, and is especially essential for Japanese language information processing systems. Typically, the display screen of such processing systems is a bitmap display, where each dot on the screen corresponds to one bit in memory, and characters are written onto the screen by writing logical 1s corresponding to the character pattern into this memory. it's shown. In addition, characters and figures can be entered using a mouse or light pen on a high-resolution tablet.
Based on the handwriting information, characters are displayed as a series of dots on a bitmap display.

The present invention relates to a method of vector character generation in which a character is generated by generating integer coordinates of the outline of a character and filling the inside thereof. Generally, when a character pattern of the original size output from vector character information is enlarged or reduced, unevenness is created at the boundary of the character pattern during the conversion process because it is an integer coordinate system, but the present invention eliminates this unevenness. It provides a new way to create vector characters.

Generally, a character pattern is created by a user using a mouse or the like to obtain character patterns of various sizes from vector character information in a specified rectangular area on a display screen to match the shape of the requested character pattern. There is.

Therefore, the present invention provides means for displaying the input vector character information in the rectangular area and simultaneously displaying the vector information of the converted character pattern on the rectangular area at the same time. The information and the vector information of the converted character are compared on the display, and the vector character information of the input original character pattern is changed so that the resulting converted character pattern has less unevenness at the boundary line. There is.

By doing so, the present invention can quickly and easily perform enlargement or reduction conversion without requiring correction information of the character pattern, unlike the conventional method of interpolating or extrapolating the boundaries of the converted character pattern. There is an effect that it can be done.

[Industrial application field]

The present invention creates a character pattern of a single character in a specified area on a bitmap display from vector character information of the boundary coordinates of the character pattern in printing processing by a high-resolution laser printer or document processing in a workstation, word processor, etc. The present invention relates to a vector character creation method for correcting inappropriate information in converted vector character information when enlarging or reducing. In particular, it relates to a vector character creation method in which a converted character pattern is displayed together with vector character information of the original character, and the vector character information is corrected and input so that the character pattern has an appropriate shape.

[Traditional technique]

With the development of integrated technology, the importance of computer processing technology using man-machine interfaces has increased, and technology that efficiently realizes graphic processing and document processing has become necessary. In document processing, it is necessary for documents to be created on a desk, and for document storage and information to be searchable, copied, or delivered to a recipient. Automate a series of such tasks, especially office automation tasks.

In order to do this, it is important to input and output the character strings that make up a document at high speed. Using VLSI technology, it has become possible to construct dedicated processors dedicated to graphics processing or character processing, which is the basic technology of man-machine interfaces, and in processing devices such as workstations or word processors, one dot of memory can be Graphics are displayed using a bitmap display device that corresponds to one dot, and character patterns can be achieved vectorially as a sequence of points on an integer coordinate system on a grid. When entering a required character pattern into such a device, the x,y coordinates of a dot can be specified by writing in a designated rectangular area on the bitmap display using the mouse on the tablet.

Then, enlarged character information that matches the requested character pattern is input as vector character information, and the character pattern is obtained by reducing it.

A problem with devices that use an integer coordinate system to display or print character patterns of multiple sizes is that it is required to obtain character patterns of multiple sizes from the single vector character information. In some cases, the input vector character information may not always be optimal. In other words, when converting the original vector character information to the requested character pattern, expansion or reduction processing is performed by coordinate transformation to the integer coordinate system of the bitmap, so there are conversion errors such as truncation and rounding, and the result is There is a problem in that irregularities are formed at the boundaries of character patterns that occur as a result of this, resulting in deterioration of the design.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

Conventionally, in the method of creating this type of vector character, in order to avoid inappropriate vector character information, the size range of the necessary character pattern is divided and multiple pieces of vector character information that match each size range are created, or one The method used was to create two vector character information, obtain a character pattern of the required size, and then modify the character pattern. This conventional vector character creation method has the disadvantage that the amount of vector character information increases when multiple pieces of vector character information are created, and it is difficult to control processing when using vector character information. The disadvantage is that it is complicated. In addition, in the latter case, processing such as interpolation or extrapolation is required to remove unevenness and smooth the boundaries of the converted character pattern, which has the disadvantage that the correction time is extremely long. had.

[Means for solving problems]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention provides storage means for storing vector characters obtained by vectorizing character patterns of a predetermined size, selection means for selecting each character pattern from the storage means, and a selection means for selecting each character pattern from the storage means. a first buffer means for temporarily holding vector information of a character pattern; a size conversion means for enlarging or reducing vector character information of an original character pattern stored in the first buffer means; a second buffer means for temporarily holding vector character information of a converted character pattern to be formed; contour information of the original character pattern stored in the first buffer means and converted characters stored in the second buffer means; display means for superimposing and displaying contour information of a pattern together with mass information corresponding to each size; The present invention is characterized by comprising a changing means for modifying the contour information so that the contour information of the converted character pattern does not deteriorate on display.

[For production]

Displaying the vector information of the character pattern obtained by enlarging or reducing at the same time in the specified area on the bitmap display that displays the input vector character information,
By correcting the input vector character information so that the character pattern is correct, the amount of correction information is increased, the complexity of control is reduced, and the correction time is reduced.

[Example] Next, a method for creating vector characters according to the present invention will be explained with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a character generation device according to the vector character creation method of the present invention. The input instruction unit 1 is a circuit that determines an input code including character code, font information, character size information, and the like. The vector character information memory 2 is a memory that stores the coordinates of dots representing the outline of each character as vector information. The input instruction section 1 accesses the vector character information memory 2 and selects one of the required character patterns. Since a code is assigned to each piece of vector character information, characters can be accessed and selected using this code. The selected vector character information is transferred to the first character buffer 3. Input instruction section 1
Since the required character size is specified in the input code of
The vector character information within is size-converted by the size converter 4, and the conversion result is stored in the second character buffer 5. That is, the size converting unit 4 includes a multiplier, and multiplies the coordinate values of each bending point representing the outline of the selected character by a number smaller than 1 in the case of reduction, and by a number smaller than 1 in the case of enlargement. You will be multiplying by a large number. In this way, vector character information of the original character pattern is stored in the first character buffer 3, and vector character information whose size has been converted is stored in the second character buffer. Under the control of the manual instruction unit 1, the master calculation unit 6 generates a grid pattern necessary to express the grid points of XY coordinates in order to express the outline of the original pattern in accordance with the size of the original character pattern. This circuit creates a grid-like master necessary to express the XY coordinates of the bending points that express the outline of the character pattern after size conversion. A first pattern synthesis section 7 and a second pattern synthesis section 8 combine the master created by the master calculation section 6 and the first character buffer 3.
and the vector information in the second character buffer 5, and synthesize it so that it can be displayed as synthesized information on the display unit 10. The display control section 9 is a control circuit that controls the display section 10 to display information obtained by combining the master and character patterns. This display control section 9 is a modification instruction section 11.
Control is performed to change the contour coordinate position of the character pattern according to a method described later by inputting an instruction from the character buffer 3, and the modified coordinates are transferred to the first character buffer 3 and stored as modified coordinate values. The display unit 10 is a display unit that simultaneously displays the original pattern and the converted character pattern including the master pattern. The correction instruction section 11 is a circuit that instructs to change the contour coordinate position corresponding to the depression of the contour while visually checking the original character pattern displayed on the display section and the converted pattern reduced according to the size conversion section 4, for example. Input is instructed by manual keystrokes on a keyboard or by light pen input. The display control section 9 is a correction instruction section 11
For example, when the outline of a reduced pattern is changed from the original pattern displayed on the display unit 10 according to an instruction input from the user, the outline of the reduced pattern is controlled to be displayed on the display unit 10 in a changed form. do. The user makes corrections from the correction instruction section 11 while looking at the original pattern and the reduced converted pattern displayed on the display section 10, and after making the corrections, the data of the coordinate position of the bending point of the contour of the corrected character pattern is displayed. is transferred to the first character buffer 3 via the display control unit 9 and modified as vector character information in the character buffer. The modified contents of the first character buffer 3 are returned to the vector character information memory 2 and stored therein.

Next, the method for creating vector characters according to the present invention is shown in FIG. 2(a).
This will be explained using the vector character information of the character ``Mi'' in ``Mirai'' shown in . The character pattern in Fig. 2(a) is created by storing the coordinate positions of vector information shown in black indicating the outline of the character pattern, reading out these coordinate positions, and using a digital differential diffractometer DDΔ to draw lines between the dots. It was created according to the vector method of generating characters by drawing the minutes and filling in the inside of the outline of the drawn character pattern. Figure 2 (a) is 104X 104
A master is used, and only the integer coordinate values of each grid point of the master can be specified. That is, Fig. 2 fa) is 104
This is vector character information with a character pattern size of ×104 dots. FIG. 2(b) shows the vector character information of FIG. 2(a) reduced to a 40×40 dot character pattern. That is, the character pattern of FIG. 2 (al) is stored in the first character buffer 3 in the character generator of FIG. 1, and the character pattern of FIG. 2 character buffer 5
is stored in In this case, since the operation of the size converter 4 is a reduction operation, the coordinates of the bending point indicated by the black part are converted into an integer coordinate system by multiplying by a number smaller than 1 and rounding off the decimal point coordinates, as shown in FIG. As shown in bl, it is converted into integer coordinate values of a master grid of 40 x 40 dots, and the converted form is stored in the second character buffer 5. In this case, the shape shown in Fig. 2 fa) “future”
The coordinate position of the inflection point representing the contour of the diagonal line shown in the lower left part of the character "Mi" is shown in Figure 2 (as shown in the lower left of bl, the coordinate position changes due to rounding up or down of information during reduction. This causes a depression, as shown in Figure 2 (
The arrows in b) become thin, resulting in a character pattern that is inappropriate for the design.

In order to explain this in detail, Figures 3 and 4 (a
l, (will be explained using bl.

Figure 3 is an enlarged view of the master display area indicated by 8 in the original pattern in Figure 1, and the points indicated by hot marks are 104X
This is the dot coordinate position of 104 dots, which is the contour coordinate point stored in the vector character information memory 2 in the block diagram of FIG. A line segment between the coordinates of the heat mark is generated using DDA, and dots are generated so that the inside of the outline is filled in black as part of the character pattern. On the other hand, Fig. 4 ta+ shows the outline and the coordinates of the bending point that determines the outline when the lower left part of Fig. 2 (b) is reduced to a 40 x 40 dot square of the part A in Fig. 2 (a). This shows that. Figure 4 (the small heat mark in al is the second
The coordinate position of the contour bending point on the 104X 104 dot corresponds to part A in the figure (al), but the large rectangular mark shown with diagonal lines is the coordinate position of the bending point on the /IOX 40 dot, and the small heat mark This corresponds to the coordinate position obtained by multiplying the XY coordinate value by 0.7 and rounding off the result.If the outline of this large rectangular mark is expressed as line segment information using DDA, it is shown in Figure 4 (a). ). Figure 4(b) shows only the concave outline in Figure 4(a), and shows the bending point corresponding to the dot position on the 40x40 dot. The coordinate position is indicated by a heat mark, and the inside of the contour formed by connecting each bending point with a line segment is indicated by a diagonal line.In other words, Fig. 3 shows the range of Fig. 2 (a) by 40 x 40 It is developed on a square in the size of a dot, and the heat mark frame is the coordinate position of vector character information shown in a size of 104 x 104 dots.

The size of these masters represents the ratio of 104 x 104 dot size to 40 x 40 dot size, which is a ratio of 2.6:1. The shaded area in the diagram is 104X
This is a pattern of 104 dots.

On the other hand, Figures 4(a) and fb) show the coordinate positions of vector character information in a 40x40 dot size, and the character pattern is inside the outline, but the pattern shown in the diagonal line has It can be seen that the contour is rounded and uneven, and the quality is worse than the pattern of 104×104 dots in FIG.

FIG. 5 shows the outline created by modifying the 40×40 dot size character pattern so that the outline becomes smooth and the modified information is reflected, and the coordinate position of the bending point of the outline. In FIG. 5, the solid line master is 4 generated by the master calculation unit 6 shown in the block diagram of the character native device.
0x 40 dot size master to pattern synthesis section 8
This is the result synthesized by and displayed on the display unit 10 via the display control unit 9. Similarly, the dotted line master is 10% of the original pattern generated by the master calculation unit 6.
This shows a master with a size of 4 x 104 dots, which is synthesized with a character pattern by the pattern synthesis section 7,
This is the result displayed on the display unit 10 via the display control unit 9. In addition, in FIG. 5, the hot marks indicate the coordinate positions of the bending points of vector character information at a size of 104x104 dots, and the solid line connecting the hot marks is the outline corresponding to the part A shown in ta+ in FIG. This is the outline of a 104-dot character pattern.

Further, the rectangular mark indicated by diagonal lines indicates vector character information on 40×40 dots, and corresponds to the heat mark in FIG. 4. When modifying the character pattern on this 40x40 dot, correct the coordinate position of a in Figure 5, move it to b, and convert the coordinate position of b to 40x40 dot to correspond to a. The position on the 40×40 dot will be moved to the master shown directly below b. As a result, the bending point is moved to a contour line without depressions as shown in FIG. Similarly, by correcting the coordinates of the bending point on the 104 x 104 dots of the original pattern shown in C to the position shown in d,
40X 4 created as a result of reducing the coordinate value of d
The coordinate value of the bending point on the 0 dot moves to a position where the outline of the character pattern follows almost the same outline as the outline on the 104×104 dot. As a result, a smooth contour line as shown in the figure can be expressed.

In this way, in the present invention, the user can
Using manual key input or light pen input, the character pattern on the 104X 104 dots and the character pattern on the 40X 40 dots as shown in FIG. 5 are simultaneously displayed on the display unit 10. 1
04 While visually observing the coordinate position of the bending point on the dot, the contour line is 1.
The feature is that the original input coordinates are changed so that they are almost the same as the contour on 04×104 dots. That is, by moving the coordinate position a of FIG. It is characterized by its ability to move without causing any change in shape. Figure 6(b) shows the contour line shown as a result of the correction and the 40X4 on the contour line.
This shows the coordinate position of the bending point of the contour line on the 0 dot. Figure 6 (in al, the small black part is 104
At the bending point coordinate position corrected on the X104 dot,
b' and d' are the coordinate positions of the bent points corrected on the 104×104 dots. and 40 corresponding to that position.
It can be seen that the coordinate position of the bending point on the X40 dot has been moved to a position where the contour line is smoothed. Figure 6 (b
l shows the resulting contour line on the 40x40 dots and the coordinate position of the bending point existing on the contour line.The contour line becomes a smooth shape, and the inside of the contour line is filled in black, so that it is reduced. become part of the pattern. That is, b' and d' of fat in Fig. 6 are 104 X 1 after correction.
This is the coordinate position of the 04 dot, and it can be seen that the corrected pattern on the 40×40 dot has no unevenness as shown in FIG. 6(b).

As explained above, the present invention vectorizes characters of a predetermined size to obtain vector character information, and then enlarges or reduces the vector character information to create a character pattern of the required size. The character pattern obtained by the correction is compared with the character pattern obtained by the correction on the display, and the user corrects the coordinate position on the outline of the original pattern with respect to the coordinate of the depression in the outline of the design in the character pattern. It is characterized by the ability to create high-quality converted character patterns.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, a high-quality character pattern can be obtained by reducing or enlarging vector character information with a small amount of information. This method has the advantage that the reduction or enlargement processing speed is extremely high.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a character generator according to the vector character creation method of the present invention, FIGS. 2(a) and 2(b) are pattern diagrams of an original character pattern and a reduced character pattern, and FIG. The figure is a pattern diagram showing the outline of the character pattern and the coordinate position of the bending point, which is an enlarged view of part A in Figure 2 (a). FIG. 5 is a pattern diagram showing the contour line and the coordinate position of the bending point on the contour line when part A is reduced; FIG. 5 is a pattern diagram for explaining the correction operation according to the vector character creation method of the present invention; FIG. (a),
(bl is a pattern diagram showing the outline of the reduced pattern and the coordinate position of the bending point on the outline, which is created by modifying according to the vector character creation method of the present invention. 1... Input instruction section, 2... Vector character Information memory, 3... First character buffer, 4... Size converter, 5... Second character buffer, 6... Square calculation unit, 7... First pattern synthesis unit, 8... Second pattern synthesis section, 9... Display control section, 10... Display section, 11... Correction instruction section. Patent applicant: Fujitsu Limited A Length of 104X104 de-)Y Figure 2 (G) Figure 2 (a) Mebe-cuttle intersection f = Σ40x4
0 do soto 0 character noku turn Ritsujuku no 1\Lj,, concave Fig. 2 Fig. 2 (C1) The part of A is humanly horribly long, and the length of the column of Bata 12 is south. S and Hipa bending note h9 Minister Saimeikai Standing surface power ＼T
1 (Hoshiba Ida 11ffi No. 3 Figure ¥ 2 Ko (b) Me left Shimokichi IS Ya 1p No 2 times (a) A sound 540 x 40 de...), 1 Ko reduction in the frame 1 (
No. 1 of the T-issued public's trunk friend Hi゛'Mokujo Kaku)
Figure 4 (C1) 7kri' contour line τζ17Σ Table L of Swamp 41￥r(a)
CR Matatsuki [Hatori 4th map, 4 hairs, 113 month's Hekutle length copy's I T danger (2 I plus carp positive movement I 乹 8 words Sanskrit tax H dimension 3 T ( Figure 5 Figure 6 (b)

Claims (1)

[Claims] A storage means for storing vector characters obtained by vectorizing character patterns of a predetermined size, a selection means for selecting each character pattern from the storage means, and a first buffer for temporarily holding vector information of the selected character pattern. means and
size converting means for enlarging or reducing the vector character information of the original character pattern stored in the first buffer means; and a second size converting means for temporarily holding the vector character information of the converted character pattern formed through the size converting means. buffer means, and the outline information of the original character pattern stored in the first buffer means and the outline information of the converted character pattern stored in the second buffer means are superimposed together with mass information corresponding to their respective sizes. a display means for displaying the contour information of the converted character pattern; and a display means for displaying the contour information of the converted character pattern so that the contour information of the converted character pattern does not deteriorate on the display when the contour line of the contour information of the converted character pattern is deteriorated on the display. and a changing means for modifying the vector character.